When Motown left Detroit in 1972 to move to Los Angeles, California, the Tops stayed in Detroit but signed a new recording deal with ABC Records' Dunhill imprint. Recording mainly in Los Angeles, they continued to have chart singles into the late 1970s, including the million-seller "Ain't No Woman", their second release on Dunhill, produced by Steve Barri and the composers Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter.

A change of lineup was forced on the group when Lawrence Payton died on June 20, 1997. The group initially continued as a three-piece under the name the Tops,[1] before Theo Peoples (formerly of the Temptations) was recruited as the new fourth member. Peoples eventually took over the role of lead singer when Stubbs suffered a stroke in 2000, with Ronnie McNeir then joining the group. On July 1, 2005, Benson died of lung cancer. Payton's son Roquel Payton replaced him. Levi Stubbs died on October 17, 2008.

Fakir, McNeir, Roquel Payton, and Harold "Spike" Bonhart, who replaced Peoples in 2011, are still performing together as the Four Tops. Fakir is the only surviving founding member of the group.

All four members of the group began their careers together while they were high-school students in Detroit. At the insistence of their friends, Pershing High students Levi Stubbs and Abdul "Duke" Fakir performed with Renaldo "Obie" Benson and Lawrence Payton from Northern High at a local birthday party. The quartet decided to remain together and named the group the Four Aims. With the help of Payton's songwriter cousin Roquel Davis, the Aims signed to Chess Records in 1956, changing their name to the Four Tops to avoid confusion with the Ames Brothers. Over the next seven years, the Tops had unsuccessful tenures at Chess, Red Top, Riverside Records and Columbia Records. Without any hit records to their name, they toured frequently, developing a polished stage presence and an experienced supper club act, as well as supporting Billy Eckstine. In 1963, Berry Gordy, Jr., who had worked with Roquel Davis as a songwriter in the late 1950s, convinced the Tops to join the roster of his growing Motown record company.

In 1964, Motown's main songwriting and production team, Holland–Dozier–Holland, created a complete instrumental track without any idea of what to do with it. They decided to craft the song as a more mainstream pop song for the Four Tops and proceeded to create "Baby I Need Your Loving" from the instrumental track. On its release in mid-1964, "Baby I Need Your Loving" made it to number 11 on the Billboard pop chart. However, the song proved to be much more popular on trend-setting radio stations in key U.S. markets and has since grown in popularity over the years to be one of the group's classic tracks. After the single's success, the Tops were pulled away from their jazz material and began recording more material in the vein of "Baby I Need Your Loving".

The first follow-up single, "Without the One You Love (Life's Not Worth While)", just missed both the pop and R&B Top 40 charts, but "Ask the Lonely", written and produced by Motown A&R head Mickey Stevenson with Ivy Hunter, was a Top 30 pop hit and a Top 10 R&B hit in early 1965. From there, the group really began to make its mark.

After their first number 1 hit, "I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)" in June 1965, the Four Tops released a long series of successful hit singles. Among the first wave of these hits were the Top 10 "It's the Same Old Song", "Something About You", "Shake Me, Wake Me (When It's Over)", and "Loving You Is Sweeter Than Ever". Four Tops records often represented the epitome of the Motown Sound: simple, distinctive melodies and rhymes, call-and-response lyrics, and the musical contributions of studio band, the Funk Brothers.

Holland-Dozier-Holland wrote most of Levi Stubbs's vocals in a tenor range, near the top of his range, in order to get a sense of strained urgency in his gospelpreacher-inspired leads. They also wrote additional background vocals for a female group, the Andantes, on many of the songs, to add a high end to the low-voiced harmony of the Tops. Ivy Hunter's "Loving You Is Sweeter Than Ever" was one of a few exceptions.

August 1966 brought the release of the Four Tops' all-time biggest hit and one of the most popular Motown songs ever. "Reach Out I'll Be There" reached number 1 on the U.S. pop and R&B charts[2] and the UK chart and soon became the Tops' signature song. It was almost immediately followed by the similar-sounding "Standing in the Shadows of Love"; its depiction of heartbreak reflecting the opposite of the optimism in "Reach Out". It was another Top 10 hit for the Tops.

Performing at New Rochelle (New York) High School, c. 1967

The Top 10 U.S. hit "Bernadette" centered around a man's all-consuming obsession with his lover,[2] continued the Four Tops' successful run into April 1967, followed by the Top 20 hits "7-Rooms of Gloom", and "You Keep Running Away". By now, the Tops were the most successful male Motown act in the United Kingdom (in the United States, they were second to the Temptations), and began experimenting with more mainstream pop hits. They scored hits with their versions of Tim Hardin's "If I Were a Carpenter" in late 1967 (mid-1968 in the U.S.) and the Left Banke's "Walk Away Renée" in early 1968. These singles and the original "I'm in a Different World" were their last hits produced by Holland-Dozier-Holland, who left Motown in 1967 after disputes with Berry Gordy over royalties and ownership of company shares.

Without Holland-Dozier-Holland, the hits became less frequent. The group worked with a wide array of Motown producers during the late 1960s, including Ivy Hunter, Nickolas Ashford & Valerie Simpson, Norman Whitfield and Johnny Bristol, without significant chart success.

The Tops departed Motown for ABC-Dunhill, where they were assigned to writer-producers Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter and the label's head of A&R, Steve Barri as producer, with The Tops' own Lawrence Payton later also serving as a producer and writer. He also took over lead vocal duties on several tracks.

After the release of "Catfish" (a top 10 R&B hit) in 1976, the major hits started to dry up and the Tops left ABC after an album recorded in Philadelphia with the MFSB musicians resulted in only minor chart success in 1978. The group disappeared from the recording scene until the early 1980s. Signing a deal with Casablanca Records, the Tops made a comeback in 1981 with the #1 R&B hit "When She Was My Girl". Produced by David Wolfert, it just missed the Billboard pop Top 10, peaking at #11. The group also scored a UK Top 10 hit with the song and had another hit there with the follow-up, "Don't Walk Away".

By 1983, The Tops had rejoined Motown, where their former ABC-Dunhill producer, Steve Barri was vice-president of A&R. They were featured on the company's television specialMotown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever, taking part in one of the highlights of the show - a battle-of-the-bands between The Tops and The Temptations, patterned after similar competitions Berry Gordy had staged during the 1960s. Levi Stubbs and Temptation Otis Williams decided the Temptations/Tops battle would be a good one to take on the road and both groups began semi-regular joint tours.

The first of The Tops' albums under their new Motown contract was Back Where I Belong. A whole side of the album was produced by the Holland-Dozier-Holland, including the R&B Top 40 single, "I Just Can't Walk Away". Only one more Tops album would be released by Motown, Magic in 1985. The lead single from that album, "Sexy Ways", was almost a Top 20 R&B hit, peaking at #21 on the Soul Charts in mid-1985. In July of that year, the group performed at the Live Aid concert, singing three of their hit songs. The album Hot Nights was completed in 1986, but was then cancelled, as the group and the Motown label began to disagree over marketing and musical direction. The following year, the Four Tops decided to leave for Arista Records, buying back several masters they had recorded for Hot Nights. It's not clear how many songs from Hot Nights were used on Indestructible, but the 2001 box set, Fourever includes the title track (previously released as a single), Red Hot Love and The Four of Us (previously released outside the U.S. on a CD single of "Loco in Acapulco"), as well as Indestructible.

The title track of 1988's Indestructible was the group's final Top 40 hit, reaching No. 35. It was also featured in the 1988 science-fiction cop film, Alien Nation. Another track, "Loco in Acapulco", written and produced by British pop musician Phil Collins and former Motown composer-producer Lamont Dozier, climbed into the UK Top 10 and made #7 in early 1989. The Arista contract provided an opportunity to pair Levi Stubbs with fellow Arista artist, another legendary R&B vocalist from Detroit, Aretha Franklin, who was at the height of her own 1980s hit streak. This pairing resulted in the song "If Ever A Love There Was", which became a popular R&B and Adult Contemporary hit, as well as being featured on the soundtrack of the motion picture I'm Gonna Git You Sucka.

In December 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 became the group's scheduled return flight to the U.S. for Christmas after completing their European tour. A prolonged recording session and a performance at the television show Top of the Pops caused them to oversleep, thus, missing the ill-fated flight which crashed in Lockerbie, Scotland, after a terrorist bomb was detonated on board.[3][4] They left London however using a later British Airways flight.

From the late 1980s, the Four Tops focused on touring and live performances. They recorded only one album, returning again to Motown for 1995's Christmas Here with You. On June 20, 1997, 59-year-old Lawrence Payton died as a result of liver cancer, after singing for 44 years with the Four Tops who, unlike many Motown groups, never had a single lineup change until then. At first, Levi Stubbs, Obie Benson, and Duke Fakir toured as a trio called The Tops. In 1998, they recruited former Temptation Theo Peoples to restore the group to a quartet. By the turn of the century, Stubbs had become ill from cancer; Ronnie McNeir was recruited to fill the Lawrence Payton position and Peoples stepped into Stubbs' shoes as lead singer. Stubbs later died on October 17, 2008 at his home in Detroit.

The group was featured in several television specials during this time, including Motown 45, and several by PBS, including a 50th anniversary concert dedicated to the group (available on DVD). The concert turned out to be bittersweet; it featured a brief appearance of the wheelchair-bound Levi Stubbs, and a memorial to Lawrence Payton, announced by Obie Benson. Benson appeared on one more PBS special and died on July 1, 2005, from lung cancer. The final PBS special, titled Motown: The Early Years, featured a message of Benson's passing following the credits. Lawrence Payton's son Roquel (real name Lawrence Payton, Jr.) replaced Benson as the new bass (Roquel could be seen in the pledge break interviews of Motown: The Early Years). Theo Peoples also left the Tops to form his own group and was replaced by Harold 'Spike' Bonhart as lead singer.

The Four Tops received The Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award as part of the 51st Annual Grammy Awards.[16][17]

Speaking in January 2010 to noted UK soul writer Pete Lewis of the award-winning Blues & Soul, Fakir confirmed plans for the "new" Four Tops to release a new album, while revealing his personal feelings about the current line-up: "To me the new group is like an extension of the family, because we've all been very close for so many years... Which makes it easier for ME, because I truly miss Lawrence, "Obie" AND Levi - I'd be lying if I said I didn't - and not one of them could EVER be replaced. But, you know, these new guys do perform well enough for the people to still enjoy the shows and still enjoy the music. So for me, it kinda makes it bittersweet. Because, at the end of the day, the legacy is still going on and I'm very pleased that it IS!"[18]

The Four Tops sang the National Anthem before the start of game 5 for the 2011 ALCS between the Texas Rangers & Detroit Tigers on October 13, 2011 in Detroit, MI. When singing the last line of "The Star Spangled Banner", "...and the home of the brave", they quickly sang the words "Ain't No country Like the One I Got", before singing the last word, "brave". The Four Tops were honored with an induction into the R&B Music Hall of Fame at the Inaugural ceremony held at Cleveland State University's Waetejen Auditorium on Saturday August 17, 2013.